Ernest Coe Campground

I’m writing this as I listen to barred owls duetting while the sun sets over the Everglades, one of my favorite places on Earth. I have had my heart set on backpacking here for a couple years now; when I was last able to come— March 2023— the Old Ingraham Highway was closed for repair, not to reopen until June. When I came in to the Park yesterday, I checked at the Ernest F Coe visitors’ center, and the staff there was unable to give me any conclusive answers. No problem, I went to Flamingo. The ranger there was very knowledgeable and helpful. We tried to figure out how to make an online reservation, but it was not working. She eventually just wrote out a permit on paper and filed it. I asked for a copy to put in my dashboard for any ranging rangers to look at. I did not have to pay for th

I wrote a review here but Google Maps erased it for some reason when I was re-reading it a few months after writing it. I’ll try to recreate it from memory. This campsite is being decommissioned by NPS, and they are no longer including it in new materials and maps. It was built on a 1923 Flamingo Highway attempt and they are letting it grow over. No one cuts back the overgrowth, especially after Ernest Coe. It is about 8-12 miles of a straight line walk through the Florida sun without any shade the entire way. There is a big “mountain” about 4 miles in that may have been some kind of logging site. The path is a limestone/gravel road that it one-lane wide for 1920s cars. It passes through three or five of these very dark and spooky and quiet overgrowth marshes which are eerie. There is no